M A I N   N E W S

English teaching a non-starter
From Jangveer Singh
Tribune News Service

PATIALA, April 20 — Navdeep Kaur (10) of Kallar Bhaini village near here has only 10 more months to learn the English alphabet. This is her last year at the primary-level and she will be ‘pushed’ into a government middle school next year without any knowledge of the subject despite its teaching having started at the primary-level for the past two years .

This is the predicament of thousands of students of this district with the government move to make rural children familiar with the English language at the primary-level so that they could stand up to their city brethren having failed miserably. The failure is even more abysmal as the scheme has not been able to take ground even in the second year of its implementation .

“We had high hopes from the scheme as we thought this would give our children a chance to learn the language without having to send them to fancy city schools at high cost. However, our hopes have been belied”, said Baldev Singh of the same village. Baldev Singh’s son also is a student of class V and has not been able to pick up the language at all.

The story is repeated at nearly every primary school visited by TNS in the district. Tragically most students who were familiar with the language were city school dropouts. Even those who have taken admission in village primary schools since the past two years like Niyamat Ali of Mardanheri village have not been able to pick up the language.

The reasons for this state of affairs are that there are no independent teachers for different classes with no English specific teacher , no special courses to reorient primary teachers and low socio economic background of the students of primary schools in the villages. At Kallar Bhaini the lone of the three teachers of the school who was present on duty said though English was being taught in the school it would have been better if there were separate teachers for the subject.

She said another reason why the language could not be taught was the fact that only students from low socio-economic backgrounds of the village studied in her school while those belonging to the landed class were enrolled in city schools at Patiala. “These children are irregular in their classes and the teachers also cannot devote full attention to them as we are always given other duties like census, adult education and elections besides study work which makes regular teaching impossible”, she added .

This seems to be the complaint of other primary teachers too. However, the practice of hiring temporary teachers by panchayats at places where there is a shortage of staff has also not been very successful with the plus two qualified teachers failing to do justice to the profession. Temporary teachers, hired at many places, have also come in handy for regular staff members who leave the school to their care on many occasions. This was witnessed at few other schools visited by TNS . District Education Officer (Primary) Harnam Singh Bajaj when contacted said there was a shortage of 660 teachers in the district, mostly in the rural areas. He said the department was trying to correct the imbalance between teachers in the rural and the urban areas. Among the steps being taken by the department, he said were transferring posts falling vacant through retirement to the rural areas. He said 514 vacancies had been created and their filling would ensure adequate staff strength in all primary schools of the district.

Mr Bajaj said results in case of English proficiency in primary schools would take some time as the entire temperament of the teachers had to change. He said the District Institute of Elementary Training (DIET) was imparting training in all subjects. He, however, said there was no specialised reorientation programme for teachers of the primary schools so that they could teach English effectively. He said he was taking steps at his own level to see that charts of the English alphabet could be displayed in all primary schools and that the alphabets could be painted on walls wherever possible to hasten the learning process.